Lesson idea: Complimenting

hi guys

im after some help with the appropriate English for a lesson on Complimenting for High school.

ive already done 1 lesson which introduced various ways and styles in which to complement people so as to initiate conversations. however, due to there being major differences in how people accept compliments depending on language (there are certainly clear distinctions between english and japanese), i said i would also do a lesson on how to receive compliments.

has anybody ever done a lesson on complimenting? even if you havent, any useful ideas or suggestions?

I haven't done one, but maybe you can make a comic strip and ask the kids to fill in the bubbles, OR, if you want to make them think, you can have them make their own strip where they have to use X-number of compliments. I did comic strips recently with my third-year JHS students and they loved it! Maybe you could also do an activity involving dating etiquette that involves compliments...? (Depending on age, of course!)

I did have a mini-lesson today. The first-years at the junior high were learning this song called "Beautiful Seasons" and one of the boys said that he was beautiful, so we taught them that girls and places and such are beautiful, but boys get a special word because they're handsome. ^.~

I gave my students a handout with blank lines and the names of every student in the class, and had them all write one compliment for each person, anonymously. Then in one of my free periods I typed up all the compliments onto one sheet for each student. The next period, each student got a paper with 25 compliments written about themselves, and there were warm and fuzzy feelings all around.

Oh, another thing you could do is bring in a box of random objects or pictures of random stuff, and have the students all grab something and complement each other based on them. "That is a beautiful hat." "Your dog is very cute." "What a lovely orange tie you`re wearing!" You can give them some standard responses to use in reply.

Himawari, your 2nd idea i did in class previously, it worked really well. i had pictures of monsters dressed in various strange items of clothing, it went down well. but, after that lesson, is where i wanted to work on replies...